


and oh how my ghosts come home to rest

by everywordnotsaid



Category: FBI (2018)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 00:11:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16629116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everywordnotsaid/pseuds/everywordnotsaid
Summary: There are some things that are harder to let go of then others.Episode tag for 1x07.





	and oh how my ghosts come home to rest

OA knows almost before he notices the Ranger’s banner hanging in Morgan’s locker room. It’s just something you always know, once you come home. It’s the buzzed hair and the way he stands, never quite relaxed, and it’s the eyes too. OA knows because he sees those same eyes when he looks in the mirror sometimes. It’s the little things, he thinks as Morgan offers him a salute. It’s the little things that stick. He can tell Maggie wants to say something as they walk out. He’s glad she doesn’t.

“Seems like a good guy.”

She finally says when they reach the car, eyes carefully forward. He nods, turns the keys in the ignition.

“Yeah. Yeah, he does.”

* * *

 The IED shakes him. It’s too familiar, in a way that makes him uncomfortable. IED’s belong in shifting sand and rolling wadi’s and endless desert heat, not in the middle of a New York street.

When he first came home he’d flinch every time a car backfired or a door slammed. Once he’d been driving home after work in a storm. He’d nearly flipped his truck, thinking the thunder was a bomb going off. It had taken him months to get it under control, to stop jumping at shadows. But this isn’t a shadow, or a thunderstorm.

When the second IED blows for a second he’s back in the desert, the street around him fades away and there’s just chaos and smoke and the taste of metal and blood in his mouth. He blinks though, and it’s gone, and he’s left staring at dirty brick with his breath coming sharp in his throat like glass and a high-pitched whine in his ears.

* * *

 The third time he talks to Jason Morgan it’s sitting in an interrogation room, cuffed to a table. Seeing his face in the CCTV footage shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It makes sense, in all the wrong ways. Army vet with a drug problem, hanging out with the wrong crowd. It’s an old old story. It still stings though. He watches Maggie take him apart and tries not to care.

She gives him a look, asking for help, and god he doesn’t want to do this he doesn’t think he can do this but he still does. Still opens his mouth and offers the empty reassurance that’s been fed to him a thousand times, it’s okay, you’re not alone. Trust me, he says, like it means something.

“No. Not what I’ve seen.”

Morgan spits, and it’s a challenge and a plea and OA’s helpless in front of it. He’s always been helpless like this. He can feel Maggie’s eyes on him and pretends he doesn’t.

* * *

Later, when she starts to ask about the story he cuts her off.

“I made it up. Just needed him to break.”

He doesn’t know why he lies. Or maybe he does. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to be that person anymore, he isn’t that person anymore. He doesn’t want her too look at him and see someone he’s not.

He’d told Morgan it’s funny the things you remember, and it’s true. He remembers that green door with its peeling red paint; hell he has nightmares about the damn thing. But he also remembers what Oscar Vega’s body looks like without a head, and he remembers lying on that dirt floor and listening to his friends scream and he remembers that by the third day he didn’t even care if he died anymore he just wanted it too end. He remembers waking up in a field hospital in Bagram five days later and the look on his CO’s face when he said he was the only one who made it out alive.

Those things he remembers too.

* * *

He sees the moment it’s over in Jason’s eyes; he sees it and pretends he doesn’t. It’s stupid and it nearly gets him killed and he’s so goddamn lucky Maggie’s there. So goddamn lucky that she has his back.

“Jesus OA, you were just going to let him shoot you.”

She says loud and brittle, after the ambulance comes and takes Morgan away. He shakes his head, runs his hands through his hair. He knows she’s not angry, just afraid. He’s afraid too. Afraid like he hasn’t been in a while.

“He wasn’t going to shoot me.”

His voice is heavy with exhaustion. He can’t stop staring at the puddle of blood on the pavement. Maggie pauses, and he can feel the pity in her eyes.

“OA,” She starts gently. “You don’t know that. He had a gun, he wasn’t in a good place. You don’t know that.”

But he does know, he has to know. Because if he doesn’t this all falls apart. He’s not sure how to tell her that though. Not in any way that makes sense.

* * *

When everything is over, the rest of the crew cuffed and processed and Morgan carted away to the hospital so they can make sure he lives long enough to go to jail Maggie finds him, still standing by the bloody smear.

“He just needed help.” he whispers, “All he needed was someone to help him and I couldn’t.”

She shakes her head.

“There wasn’t any help you could’ve given him that would have stuck, OA. He was too far gone. Sometimes…sometimes people don’t want to be fixed.”

He nods, but as he turns and follows her back to the car he thinks that she’s wrong. Because OA has been there, god help him he’s been there close enough to touch the darkness, the desperation, and if anybody could have saved Jason it should have been him. But he didn’t, and somehow the world just keeps on turning.

* * *

Maggie has to debrief when they get back to the office, the paperwork for officer-involved shootings always take forever. He wants to wait for her but Mosier tells him to take the rest of the day off, to go home and get some rest. There’s something careful to her tone, like she’s talking to a cornered animal or something equally fragile and vicious. It pisses him off a little. He’s not a delicate flower; he’s not going to break down just because he swapped war stories with some PTSD vet who couldn’t keep his shit together.

He doesn’t go home in the end. The thought of sitting in his empty apartment and watching TV or making dinner or sleeping makes him feel nauseous so instead he walks around for a bit. The voice of his drill sergeant from boot camp echoes in his ears, just walk it off, son, all you gotta do is walk it off. There are some things that you can’t just walk off though. Some things that don’t heal right, like a broken bone that never got set.

And sometimes he can’t figure out if he can’t let go of the past or the past won’t let go of him. Or maybe it’s both, maybe it’s neither, maybe he was always a lost cause. Maybe he’s still just waiting for the bullets to catch up to him.

He sits on a bench and stares at the ground and for the first time in a long time wonders why he’s still alive when all his friends are dead and buried six feet under. When guys like Jason Morgan blow their brains out or get hooked on coke or drink themselves into an early grave just so they don’t have to remember. Why did he make it when so many didn’t. The question tastes bitter and heavy and sad. 

* * *

He doesn’t really mean to go to Maggie’s. It just happens to be on the way home and then he’s walking down her street and up the stairs and knocking on the door. He’s never been here before, but he still has the address memorized. She doesn’t answer and he almost walks away right there but something stops him. So instead he stands at the bottom of her stoop and waits in the rain.

When she finally shows up with a bag full of groceries the rain has stopped. He’s not even sure what to say, he hadn’t really planned that far ahead, hadn’t really planned at all. And when she asks if he’s okay he isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

“Yeah.”

He says (he’s lying). She looks concerned, eyebrows drawn and lips turned down and it makes him want to run away as fast as he can but he takes a deep breath and plants his feet and stays.

“I was wondering if I could take you up on your offer to talk?”

Because there are some things that don’t heal, like broken bones that were never set. But there some things that can.


End file.
